


It's Nothing

by akelios



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Kinkmeme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akelios/pseuds/akelios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I am so glad you could join us, Baron. I was beginning to fear I was going to have to leave my message carved into the wizards skin.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Nothing

The pain in my head was pervasive, a sharp throbbing at the back of my skull that radiated out to the rest of my body, the muscles of my neck tight with it. I moved in small increments, and even that slowly, testing for more injuries while keeping still enough that my conscious state would hopefully not be noticed.

There were minor wounds that I could feel. Cuts, bruises and the like. The catalogue of pains was familiar. I'd been in some sort of an explosion. I must not have been too close, or I'd been shielded in some way because I was still alive and relatively unharmed. Once I'd decided that I wasn't in imminent danger of dying from some untreated wound, I turned my attention to my surroundings and what might have happened.

My memory was fractured. I had been with Dresden. A meeting to discuss...activity in some of the less well protected areas of Chicago. Young children disappearing. Yes. The police hadn't made a connection between the abductions – they weren't even calling them abductions – but I knew somehow, though the details escaped me at the moment, that they were all being taken by the same creature. Ms. Gard was...wounded in an altercation with the beast. Unconscious, but healing. No one else from her team had survived to give me a clear picture of what we were dealing with. I'd turned to Dresden.

And we'd been attacked. There had been sudden violence. Gunshots, heat, fear that drove my adrenaline higher; the deep, twisted excitement of battle and Dresden shouting in that terrible mangled version of Latin he used for his spells. Blackness. Whatever had hit us was lost to me for the moment. It would come back, most likely. Such lost details usually did, though not always.

I had to assume we'd either been captured or were still potentially under attack. My wrists were tied, the rope oddly smooth against my skin. I twisted my hands around as carefully as I'd done everything else. There was no give and I could not find the knot. When I reached for the knife I kept at the small of my back it was gone, as were the knives I kept in sheaths on my wrists. Nothing.

The room, it felt too enclosed to still be outdoors and there was no sound of wind or wildlife, was cool but not cold. There was light that flickered and moved playing across my eyelids. Firelight. Too far away to give me any of its heat. And the sounds.

Now that I was paying attention I could hear the faint crackle of the fire. There was breathing that echoed in the space. Not mine, which was quiet and even, never rising from a supposedly unconscious rate. Others. Hard, panting. Exertion. Muffled, choked sounds of pain. Flesh impacting flesh. A beating?

Dresden. Harry. He'd been with me. In front of me, actually. The memory swam up from the blackness of my mind. His tall, too thin form swathed in that ridiculous coat, his left hand outstretched to focus the glowing shield that formed in front of him. Between us and a wave of... _something_ that glowed red and moved like a shock wave. I remembered the shield cracking, bright explosions of light and then I was flying backwards through the air.

I opened my eyes a fraction, just enough so that my blurred surroundings could coalesce into something real. The room was a hodge podge, one of the walls concrete, another crumbling brick. The third looked to be nothing more than earth packed together so tightly that it had taken on an almost glossy shine. There was no furniture that I could see, only a pit for the small fire that was the only source of light, a mound of clothing with Dresden's coat on top, and a large pile of very small bones in a corner near the fire.

I could see Dresden, between where I lay and the fire itself. And the creature that crouched over him.

It was not a beating, not as I had thought originally in any case.

Harry was on his back, naked, his skin glowing red and gold from the flames, slick with sweat. His arms were stretched out over his head, chained to a bolt in the floor. Blood, black in the unsteady light, dripped from his wrists where they had been cut on the edges of the cuffs. He had his head turned in my direction, but his eyes were shut, his cries muffled into the flesh of his own arm.

The creature could almost have been human. It wasn't particularly large, not compared to Harry or even myself. My height, but less muscular, though that didn't seem to make a difference to his strength as he shifted the grip of his clawed hands and lifted Harry bodily from the floor, so that only his shoulders, head and arms still rested on the dirt. He was covered in gray scales that shimmered with a muted rainbow of colors where the light hit them, leathery gray wings rose from his back, flapping slowly as he moved, stirring the air. He, for it was very much a _he_ and the evidence of his maleness was horrifically disproportionate to the rest of his body, knelt back on his heels, hissing and speaking in a language I had never heard before, at once both guttural and fluid. His claws cut into Harry's flesh as his hips pistoned back and forth, so fast that the movement was almost a blur, short gray-black hair plastered to his all too human head. The small horns that ran along his skull seemed natural.

Rape.

I'd seen it before, in another life. An easy way to demoralize and dehumanize your enemies. To show them how little power they had. There had always been the unspoken rule amongst us. We did not speak of it. We did not acknowledge it even as it happened to our friends, our brothers, in front of our eyes. Especially not when it happened to us. It was not real if it was never spoken of. And we took our vengeance, when we could. That was the rule and it had served us well enough. I did not think that Harry would thank me for breaking the rule for him, but he had gone limp, the tension sapped from his muscles. His head flopped bonelessly on the floor and, though it was hard to tell in the poor light, I thought his lips might be going blue. He could not breathe.

I kicked my feet and sent something that had been resting against the soles of my shoes skidding over the floor. It shattered against a wall and the creature turned his head to face me, strange deep green eyes glowing in the shadows that stretched across his face. Lips peeled back from sharp, fang-like teeth in a grim smile. The bat-like wings stretched and flapped harder, sending a gust of musty smelling air into my face.

“You're killing him.”

“He's dying anyway. What does it really matter if he dies here and now at my hands, or later in welter and gore at the hands of another?” He changed the angle of Harry's body, though, and I could hear the first coughing, wet gasp of air Harry dragged in instinctively. “I have made promises, and his life is not mine to take. Not yet. I am so glad you could join us, Baron.” Even if he hadn't looked like some nightmare, the ability to speak perfect English through a mouth of long, curving fangs would have told me the thing was supernatural. There was so slur, nothing. I could not place his accent. “I was beginning to fear I was going to have to leave my message carved into the wizards skin.”

His wings snapped out in front of him, shielding both of them from view. There was a blur, like a heat mirage and for a moment it felt as though the room was full, filled with a heavy, almost reptilian form, though that was not quite right. The air tasted of snakes, the cool, dry scent of them, combined with something else, something thicker. Old, drying blood and offal. I did not see the change in form happen. It was as though one second he was the creature, horrific for how nearly human he had appeared and the next he was entirely human seeming. His eyes remained the same. Green, but a green that did not exist in this reality.

He stood there without having to rise, a neat, clean cut man of indeterminate age, straightening his suit as he walked toward me. I did not struggle in an attempt to rise. I had no weapons and sitting up would make no difference in my ability to resist this creature should he intend violence.

“Tell Wizard Dresden, when he wakes, that I have not forgotten his rudeness to me at Bianca's party, or the poor company he chooses to keep. If he crosses my path again, I will not be so gentle.” My eyes flicked past the creature in man's clothing to where Harry lay, utterly still but for the rise and fall of his chest, blood and other less pleasant things staining his skin and the earth beneath him. “As for you, little mortal thing, do not interfere in the affairs of your betters.”

I never saw his hand move, but lines of burning pain sliced across my cheek. A second later I felt the tiny trickles of blood rolling down my skin to patter in the dirt beneath my head.

When my vision cleared the creature was gone as though he had never been and my hands were free. I pushed myself to my hands and knees, and from there to my feet. A key glittered in the firelight, dangling off of an outstretched, nearly skeletal hand that emerged from the pile of bones as if begging for help. I took it and moved over to Harry, who was starting to stir, trying to pull his arms down and cutting himself on the manacles again and again.

~

We did not speak until after my people had come for us, until we were seated in the back of one of my cars. Dresden refused to allow my doctor to look at him, and I could not insist without acknowledging what I had seen. Dresden insisted that he would have his wounds, minor cuts he said, looked at by his personal doctor the medical examiner. I asked only one final question as we pulled into the parking lot of the morgue.

“Who was he?”

“Ferrovax. He's a dragon.” Dresden leaned against the side of the car for a second, steeling himself for the walk over to the door. I leaned my head out of the window and gave him the time. “Leave him alone, Marcone. He's bad news and way the fuck out of your weight class.” Then he shoved off, limping. I watched until he was safely within and then signaled for the driver to move on, my mind occupied.

How did one go about killing a dragon?


End file.
